Loading details…
Artist
The McPeake Family
12+ albums
irelandfolkBritish IslesIrish FolkÉire
about
The McPeake family of Belfast were one of the few Irish pre-ballad boom groups. That they were better-known abroad than at home is illustrated by a story told about a conversation between Bob Dylan and Bono of U2 in 1984. The legendary singer asked what Bono thought of the McPeakes. The Dublin-born Bono had never heard of them. The group was built up around the grandfather, Francis I, who had studied pipes under the blind Galway piper John Reilly. It was the Belfast Presbyterian nationalist Francis Joseph Bigger (1863-1926) who brought O’Reilly to the northern city to teach McPeake to play. O’Reilly stayed for three months with the McPeakes. Bigger gave him five shillings a week spending money, 15 shillings a week to send home to his family, and seven shillings and sixpence to the McPeakes for his lodging. Francis McPeake had won prizes at the 1908 Belfast Feis and the 1912 Oireachtas. His musical career began as a triangle player in a flute band of which his brother John was a founder member, around 1898. He acquired a set of O’Mealy pipes and developed the unique facility of being able to sing and play at the same time, a combination repeated with great success by The Fureys and Planxty (albeit using both a vocalist and piper). The family group, composed of Francis (Da), his sons Francis II and James, and grandchildren Kathleen, Francis III and Tom McCrudden, achieved considerable international success and won the Eisteddfodau in 1958, ‘60 and ‘62. In the 1950s they played
